Saturday, 05 July 2014

I managed to sleep all night last night! I felt so much better today as a
result.

It was a beautiful day today, with unseasonably low temperature and humidity.

The girls played around in the back yard for a bit in the morning once everyone
got up and got going for the day, and after lunch we were going to go to a
local neighbourhood park, but only got as far as the pool instead.

All of this time in the pool is certainly doing wonders for Zoe's confidence in
deep water. She did lots of deep diving and swimming today.

I realised how much I'm enjoying the limited downtime of this holiday. Just the
break from having to cook is massive. Skipping out on cooking but still having
heaps of quality time with Zoe has been fantastic. I'm also really loving the
leafy green neighbourhood.

I took the Peikerts out for dinner tonight to say thanks for having us. We had
a nice dinner at a local bar. After we got home and all the kids were bathed,
Zoe wanted to watch Clara practice the piano, which devolved into an impromptu
piano lesson for Zoe, so I didn't end up getting her to bed until quite late.
Hopefully we can all sleep in a bit tomorrow morning.

Zoe woke up at briefly at about 1:30am wanting her blankets pulled up. I
managed to get back to sleep after that, but woke up at 4:30am for the day. A
slight improvement.

I'd wanted to time our visit so that we could be here for the 4th of July. We
pottered around at home in the morning and then walked down the street to the
neighbourhood pool for a
4th of July ice cream social. It was a bit more than ice cream though, we had
sandwiches as well.

After some time in the pool, we had a nap so we'd last until after the
fireworks, and after an early dinner, headed into downtown Decatur in
preparation for the fireworks.

The girls had a great time playing in a local park for a while, and then we
parked over in a multi-story parking garage downtown, and got into position on
the roof to watch the fireworks.

We joined a friend of Chris' (also named Chris) and his two daughters, while we
waited for it to get dark. Chris, Chris and I played Carcassonne on
Chris' phone (it looks like a cool game, I'll have to try and get better at it)
while the girls played cards and generally fooled around.

The fireworks started a bit after 9pm. There's one thing about America, it
knows how to put on a good fireworks show, and this was just Decatur. Zoe was
very impressed. So I'm glad I got to show her a 4th of July fireworks show.